Echoes of Decimation (2006)

Sorry, no Origin content.  Awesome record is still awesome, but I'm just heisting the title here.

--

My desktop computer is on the verge of breaking down.  In the process of cleaning it up to prepare for the move to a new box, though, I found something interesting going back to 2006.  I had apparently mostly forgotten in the interim, but it turned out that I had taken more pictures of the China trip than I previously thought.  Like, a lot more.  A bunch of them were duplicates or boring (at the time) pictures of barely-lived-in hotel rooms, but some of them are novel, and just overall, it's kind of interesting to see what didn't get selected for publication back then -- and compare it to what did.


NEMHF 2006

These pictures are from the 2006 iteration of the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, and cover the first two bands, after which I decided it was a fool's errand.  Six and a half years on, I still fail at taking pictures indoors, but tend to keep doing it.



D01. Alarum, with neither flash nor focus.



D02. Alarum again, and the flash prematuring off a dude's back.  Four years later, Mark (center) and I would recall this performance over beers at Wacken.



D03. The Absence and no detail at all.


They Missed The Cut For China 1



D04. Chronologically after pic 01 in that album, this shows the legs of the dinosaur and more of the concourse.



D05. First picture from HK, inside the hotel.  I was apparently very impressed with Asian hotels after last being parked in a closet in Leuven.  (There was a link-mark on that because I wrote this up offline, initially, and forgot that the Belgium trip referred to is also still unposted....though it's been not-really-classified for five years now.  More tales untold.)



D06. This should precede the famous picture 09.  Obviously, I was setting up for that one -- pushed in from across the street and a ways up Nathan -- and the bus drove into the shot, neatly blocking the sign.















D07 - D13. Between pictures 13 and 14.  These are interiors from my brand-spanking-new/barely-finished room out in the BJEDD.  D13 really captures the uncanny emptiness of the place.



D14. After picture 15.  The effect of the giant, empty room and the high-line furnishings was pretty disorienting.



D15. Between pictures 16 and 17.  This shot completes the 'pan' (shot around closed curtains) between those two.  You see more of the replanted trees, and also a high-rise development that contrasts with the high-volume single-family development in 17.

















D16 - D23. A tour of my room at the Beijing Marriott (following picture 19).  Apparently the closet was super impressive.  A lot of this is implied by pic 19, but the kitchen, as seen in the first two shots, kind of needs the extra view.  And yes, there are two different beds pictured.  This was an extremely large as well as well-furnished space to keep one engineer in.


Held Back From China 2



D24. This is an alternate, more poorly-centered take on pic 18, but there may be some extra information at the edges.


Walled Off From China 3



D25. Bootlegs and paraphrenalia, and the shiny black granite countertops.  All those things on the left are DVD sleeves.  This precedes the whole album.



D26. An alternate take of picture 09.



D27. The silk burner on the other side of the path from the one in picture 12, plus tour leader.



D28. Blurry original take of picture 23.  Closer to the present, this would have just gotten deleted on-site.



D29. Mad as a wet....engineer, I guess.  As the end of the album shows, I got majorly rained on at the Great Wall, and this small shirt (well, technically 4XL, but these are Chinese sizes) was what I had on hand, as a souvenir, to wear on the bus back to the hotel.  Between pictures 55 and 56.

--

Of the 29 rediscovered pictures, 3 aren't from the trip, and of the 26 that are, 19 of them are mostly dealing with the interiors of hotel rooms.  Two others are obvious mistakes that got corrected in the next shot.  However, there is enough of interest in the last five pics of legit B-roll to marginally justify dredging these up.  I'm not sure why D15 especially and also D27 did not make it into the original release.  The first really reinforces the other pictures from the BJEDD, and there are enough shots with other people in them that I can't see why the second was excluded.  Those cut decisions may have made sense then, but they don't now -- hence this post rolling them back out.

NEMHF 2011 - day 3 driveby [Worcester Palladium, 4/16/2011]

Sometime in the week leading up to Metalfest this year (the New England usage will remain throughout, as we've apparently usurped this title from Milwaukee), I found out that if things stayed lined up correctly, I could see the following bands in the following order:

downstairs - Cephalic Carnage
upstairs - Withered
upstairs - Revocation
upstairs - Believer
downstairs - Dying Fetus

The chance to roll up, see that lineup for $35, and then go home before the sun went down proved to be a powerful inducement for me to go back to NEMHF after a year's layoff in frustration with the, from my perspective, steadily decaying overall worthwhileness of the bill offered. As another festivalgoer (who played on Saturday) opined, "third-rate hardcore band after third-rate hardcore band" really saps the patience of the audience, especially someone like me who is more interested in the "metal" part of the festival as advertised. To see Believer, though, live in the flesh again and hopefully playing something off Dimensions, and to pack in Revocation, Withered, and most of the interesting death metal on offer over the entire three days as a bonus, I'd put up with 20-minute sets, schedule chaos, and the occasional second-run hardcore set. This story, then, is also about acceptance: accepting NEMHF for what it is, and enjoying the festival the way you can, in a way that minimizes the parts that people bitch about.


--

The Pike being nearly empty for most of the way out, I got in a little ahead of schedule and got set up: cheap beer, crap festival food, a browse through the merch stands, and then down to the tier above the floor, not really noticing the bands that were on to that point. As almost could've been expected, the schedule had gotten delayed by about 20 minutes, nearly a full set, so there was no way that The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza was going to finish in enough time that Cephalic could go on after them and not clip Withered. No worries; you accept this sort of thing at this festival and roll with the punches.

The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza [4.5/7]
Not quite in the does-this-festival-spontaneously-generate-these-bands caption so exhaustively bewailed in 2006, these guys did a crunchy but somewhat idea-light set of noise-fueled hardcore that stayed interesting for most of their allotted set time. Some of this, at least from the perspective of the old cranky metalheads in the audience, was in watching Josh do his shit; there's a real sense that his chops are wasted on this band, and I'd like to see what he'd do in a tech-death context, but if he had any interest in that, he'd have a death metal band by now. Still, good guitar work is good guitar work, no matter what it's applied to, and it lessened the sting of missing Cephalic.

Though I probably could've caught at least the start of CC's set, I went upstairs straight away, on the idea that it was anyone's guess when any given band was going to start, and doing it this way would minimize the potential sets missed. This pretty much turned out to be the case.

Withered [5/7]
Severely pinched by the format, and maybe by the sound -- which several people, including some who'd played earlier in the fest, had complained about -- Withered still delivered three good songs, at least, if in a thrashier manner than I'd seen from them previously. The change in sound was ok, overall, with the ripping black and crushing doom parts still coming through as needed. Bands like Withered and Believer (see below), though, are really hurt by the format that the festival imposes; while a lot of hardcore bands benefit from a 20-minute set by playing six to eight songs and getting out before people can get tired of it, metal bands that rely on longer and more complex compositions get into this kind of hole where you play three songs and pack it in before the audience has a real impression of you. For volume (not quite to say variety), there's nothing like NEMHF, but that volume comes at a price.

After some ranting about pretty much that exact issue and another beer gathered, I was able to get marginally further forward. Revocation'd played previously on this stage, but that was as a late replacement, while they still only had the Summon the Spawn demo out (well, besides the Cryptic Warning material), and now, they were back with several Relapse-backed tours and a nationally-released record under their belts. The delta between performances was going to be interesting.

Revocation [6.5/7]
You're not really going to get a "7" level set on this stage, at least this early in the day; the time allotted doesn't really allow for it. However, Revocation sure as fuck made the argument that the above arbitrary number is too small, ripping through a frenetic, blasting set of Existence... material -- leading off with current T-shirt song "Re-Animaniac" and closing with "Exhumed Identity" -- with all the fire, chops, and humor that they've had since forever ("Who likes unnecessarily-long guitar solos? Then you must make THE WEEEDLY FINGERS!!"). There are changes, of course; more of the vocals are spread more evenly across the three non-drummers, and adding a live second guitarist's thickened up the sound somewhat, both working to overall benefit as Dave can put more into his solos. The crowd ate it up and was flying around like crazy, even before the "obligato breakdown" (ripping, of course, on the way this festival always pans out), which bodes well: if NEMHF may not be a tastemaker, it's pretty predictive of the mainstream in modern metal, and good performances upstairs here tend to lead to good performances downstairs further down the line.

Believer [6.5/7]
Actually determining which of these sets was better than the other is going to be an extremely close-run thing, and an exercise in utter futility for, alone, the subsection of useless anoraks who are incapable of just listening to good music, full stop. They didn't play "Dies Irae" (not surprising), or, as far as I could remember, anything else off Dimensions, and 2/3 of the set was off the new record, but Believer is still Believer. They may be not as out-in-front Christian as on the old days, certainly not doing the Jesus-shoutouts that I've seen from hardcore bands on this fest in the past, but they're still playing, even on the Transhuman material, that same heavily-but-not-overbearingly-technical "culmination thrash" that has, for the most part, utterly disappeared. Realm, Toxik, Demolition Hammer, Devastation (the one from San Antonio), Xentrix, Dark Angel, all gone, only Believer having made it back from that oblivion so far; if you want to hear this music live, you go see this band, or see Revocation and hope that they pick only those songs where the influence from that period of thrash is the heaviest. As mentioned above, the set times limitation was a real pain, but the band claimed that they'd be back; hopefully this is the case, and we can get another set out of them in this part of the country. A full hour set with more stuff from Dimensions than Gabriel and later, maybe not likely when they've got a new record to push, but it'll be more Believer and Believer again, and that, as noted recently about a different band, is not something that many people thought we'd ever have the opportunity for even five years ago.

Via the offsets mentioned up at the start of this writeup, there was some un-inititally-planned-for lag time between the end of Believer's set and when Dying Fetus ended up starting. Since it's Metalfest, and you already paid your ticket, this is time to watch bands that you wouldn't bother to see otherwise; I picked up a Revocation shirt and the sports-parody festival shirt from this year (basketball, to compare with football two years ago), got another beer, and actually paid attention to most of Oceano.

Oceano [5/7]
I'm pretty sure there's better deathcore bands out there, even if I'm not listening to them either. That being said, these guys put out an eminently satisfactory set for this festival; a lot of brutality, a sprinkling of technicality, and not much that would complicate dudes in the pit moshing the fuck out of each other. Just as "it wouldn't be Metalfest without a breakdown", as Dave Davidson noted two sets back, it wouldn't be Metalfest without this band, and bands like them, composed largely of breakdowns if not breakdowns alone, bringing the violence to the floor downstairs. This is what the culture is here, not just at the fest but in the region, and as long as it works (and gets people in the door for Dying Fetus), there's not much that can be said against it.

Dying Fetus [6/7]
Since being surprised that I hadn't seen this band yet (admittedly, that was two and a half years ago), I've seen them what feels like over and over, in what feels like deliberate irony. This set maybe wasn't quite to the level of the set this summer, but I was less drunk for it (having to drive home rather than stumble back to a tent) and can thus remember more of it, and I'm not sure that we got "Grotesque Impalement" in Bad Berka either. Pick 'em; perennially awesome death metal band is perennially awesome at death metal. This set did feel a little short, but you can't argue with even this ration of Dying Fetus.

The bands that I cared about over, I went up to the balcony for a last swing through the merch stands. What really struck me about this fest was in this department: namely, that the dealer area was almost entirely depopulated, and that fuck-all anyone was selling music. In the past, this wasn't the case. You'd go up and there'd be four or five labels with actual CDs for sale, plus three or four DIY distro outfits; everyone had T-shirts taped to the wall in the back, but they had CDs out, mainly, and their setup was built around moving them. How quickly things change. This year, I'm not sure it'd be even possible to pick up 20 different CDs, let alone past years where it was wicked normal to end up with 20 new records by the end, not even counting promos and grab-bag swag. Either Scott's priced out the DIY dealers, nobody decided to run a shingle out on Saturday, or the market for physical copies not on vinyl really has crashed that badly, at least among this festival's target demographic. I did end up buying stuff -- new albums from Ensign and Black Anvil, plus Cannabis Corpse's newish EP (all on vinyl, pay to die) -- but could not escape the feeling of change and melancholia. Darkness and silence, the light will flicker out.

3 Inches of Blood [NR]
These guys were playing during said merch run, to a packed upstairs that was so close to capacity that the security were only letting people through the door who were going up to the balcony. They played well enough -- "Deadly Sinners" an especially ripping closer -- but I wasn't paying enough attention to paste an arbitrary label on the set as a whole. The impression, though, is that they deserved the crowd they had, and that the audience was about as for-serious about the music as the band, a good sign for diversity at this festival as long as someone picks it up.


Records under my arm, I headed out; unlike CDs, this is really all you can do with a stack of vinyl, however few or many, as 12" slabs of wax with no rigid hulls around them don't really lend themselves to getting stuffed in a kutte inside pocket. You put down on records, and you've got to carry them around, and somewhat necessarily stop thrashing. However, I'd seen four of the five bands I'd planned to see, and two and a half that I didn't, gotten for the most part pretty good to really good performances, and now was hitting the mark I'd originally set to leave. This is how I can approach Metalfest now: to take on defined terms and to leave satisfied even at six in the afternoon. Others, with a greater tolerance for "third-rate hardcore band after third-rate hardcore band" than I've got remaining, can stick for every set on every day as I've done in the past, but with so few bands I had a legit interest in, even relative to other years (this stretch was pretty much it, modulo Faces of Bayon and Death Ray Vision on Friday), it's not so much the fact that the festival's a parade of mediocre deathcore as how uninterrupted that parade is.

NEMHF has always been a parade of mediocre deathcore and metalcore. It is in the festival's DNA, maybe in the DNA of the New England metal scene at large over the past decade and a half. We can't ignore or hide from this fact. This region is one of the major producers of blended hardcore and metal, of various stripes, in the US and in the world at large. It shouldn't be surprising that there's a lot of this blended music on a big commercial festival located smack dab in the middle of it, population-wise. The strength of the festival in previous years, though, has been to salt enough underground or "true" stuff through the run of the bill, on all days, that people from deeper in the scene "have" to go, not just to see one band -- like Believer for me this year -- but half a dozen, and end up seeing more or less the whole run of the bill; not only does this get the underground in, but it exposes the people who go to the festival for the headliners and the balance of the acts to kinds of music they might not have heard otherwise. The last two years, that's fallen off; I was pretty much in the same position last year, but all the bands they had, I was going to be seeing in Europe. We'll see how the balance works next year; this may be the last one for me, but it doesn't have to be. This fest is ours, all of ours in New England, and I remain optimistic about its potential to continue to regenerate itself to appeal to every corner of the New England scene, not just the most commercially attractive ones.


Regarding other festivals, even if NEDF is no more, my ticket for Wacken is in, and the ticket for Party.San should be in shortly (though I may need to do some re-organizing). Formal "tour" RFM (request for merch) to go out once plans are actually finalized.

NEMHF 2009 - day 2 [Worcester Palladium, 4/18/2009]

And now, the second part of the NEMHF 2009 report.



Don't Actually Go To The Festival Day

The number of bands I was actually interested in on the second day of this year's fest was somewhat restricted; nevertheless, I still saw a bunch, on the idea that you never discover a good band when you skip their set because you think they suck. It didn't exactly work out that way, but it was an entertaining time and I got more value out of my second-day ticket.

Unholy [4/7]
I heard this band as I was doing my last merch run; decent, but not superlative hardcore that may grade out higher for genre fans -- and lower for those into the Finnish doom band of the same name, especially if they think bands should do more research before picking a fairly generic name.

Book of Black Earth [5.5/7]
I wasn't super impressed with them when I saw them supporting Watain, or with their record, but glad I went downstairs for them here. This was a good set with a frickin huge sound, showing the band moving in the direction of Nachtmystium....or Doomriders on a huge Satyricon kick. Some people may bitch about the future of black metal, but no band is responsible for who they influence, and these guys are still playing good music.

After dropping my stuff at the hotel, I ran into them coming the other way and gave some appreesh; they probably thought it was insincere given the circumstances, but it was fully meant, and yes, I did see them. I got back in, after getting lunch off the eats truck, a little earlier than intended, and found the running order in disarray. Oh well; better to stick, though, from now on.

The Ghost Inside [5.5/7]
This band put up some nice SoCal hardcore, with a solid performance, but didn't really break free of the mold at any point. The floor liked them enough to pile up at several points, which is a distinguishing mark of good HC; though I prefer a little harder, this was still a good time.

Suicide Silence [5/7]
A surprise add, but nothing surprising or particularly novel in the set. It seriously felt like each breakdown was preciselt the same as the one before, which kind of befits this band as the ne plus ultra of their style. They're closer to death metal than their imitators, but the new song, not so much; decidedly weaker in comparison to the rest of their material.

If you were here and thought some mainstage band's sound was fucked up, it was probably the drum micing. The cymbals were all but gone for Suicide Silence's set, and subjects of extensive hotfixing throughout Thy Will Be Done.

Thy Will Be Done [5/7]
The new material they rolled out here sounds pretty much exactly the same as the old stuff; well, old for this name, not going back to when they were Kobalt or anything. This was a decent metalcore performance, but it's bands like this that really make you glad of the short setlists rather than cursing them.

Back en route to the head and the bar area, I saw Doc (God Forbid) joking with a female friend, telling her he was going to get her tossed for stalking him or the suchlike. This is the cool fan-participation part of the fest; in addition to this and the BoBE encounter above, I saw members of Suffocation and Withered in the audience on Friday, just thrashing out and hanging around like anyone else. We are they and they am us.

In addition to Metalfest at the Palladium, this was also the first of a two-date stand by the current incarnation of the Grateful Dead at the hockey arena down the street, and as a result the hippies were out in full force. I got solicited like twice to buy the Bhagavad-Gita by some epically confused Krishnas -- what part of "No Jesus, No Beast" do they think doesn't also apply to their fairytales? Ok, maybe they just don't listen to Immolation, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't.

Iwrestledabearonce [4.5/7]
If this band is serious, their level of success is a biting indictment of a certain segment of the underground. If, however, they're not, and are subtly trolling the world of Myspacecore, they are the best troll band since Composted, and a lot of dudes are going to be stammering declamations that they knew it was a gag all along. Maybe they are for srs, but coming out jamming to "Final Countdown" with your singer in a Furby costume kind of argues against that. There was some irony in these guys following Thy Will Be Done; the sound in their riff portions was often similar, whether for the lulz or not. We'll see how they go; not really sure they're good enough to pay attention to without the gag portion.

Austrian Death Machine [5/7]
If these guys were serious, we would be right fucked. Fortunately, though, this outfit is a supergroup built out of a piss-take project from the singer of As I Lay Dying (or "As I Lay Crying", as "Ahnold" apparently says on their record, which is probably more apt), and even if the music is pretty pedestrian and the gags not as funny as Composted, it's certainly better than the alternative.

Tim (AILC -- okay, AILD) commented that they hadn't rehearsed at all going into this show, and it showed; Ken Susi spent the entire set with his axe at his waist rather than behind his head. Alternately, maybe he woodshedded his parts solo and re-learned how to play in a more normal position so as not to take attention away from the dude in the Governator kigurumi. (Warning: link unrelated and not safe for sanity.)

All Shall Perish [5.5/7]
If they'd gone on longer, this might bump up higher, but that's the breaks at this festival. Here, just full-on brutal HC/metalcore, but when this style makes you go "already?" instead of "finally!" when they announce that they're closing up, you know they're doing something right. Yeah, "Hatebreed Junior" maybe, but Hatebreed isn't playing this year.

Winds of Plague [5/7]
Though this deathcore band wears their death metal influences on their sleeves (viz prominent Morbid Angel and Nile quotes in this set), they were never really able to generate separation for themselves as a band. The sound may have had something to do with it -- not cutting as strong as on the bands preceding and following -- but the responsibility's got to come back to the music, in the end, to overcome the PA and present the band as worth paying attention to.

An egregious pick point about this band, because I am a wicked language nerd. They are apparently weeaboos, as they have samurais and Japanese characters all over their shit. Despite this, they insist on transcribing their name into kanji not as [Winds of Plague], but [Wind] [of] [Plague]. To paraphrase Morbo, JAPANESE DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT. So, instead of "Winds of Plague", Aggressive Dogs, for example (also on this fest, but I didn't realize it until after their set), would read "Plague of Winds"....and probably laugh at them, which is about deserved.

Emmure [4/7]
No Hatebreed allusions on this band; Hatebreed is more interesting than this and not as clunky. You can't question the CTHC commitment in wearing a hoodie in the freaking sauna that was the downstairs at this point, as the singer did for about three-quarters of their set, but commitment on its own does not write interesting music.

Municipal Waste [7/7]
There wasn't to this point, a single set that on its own would stand above the rest and justify the $80 ticket. This was it: Municipal Waste killing it while dressed as hippies (purchased from the fan faire surrounding the Grateful Dead caravan) and staying in character between songs, Tony climbing on top of a speaker stack and stripping to his underwear, then yanking it up into his crack and dancing around to "Bangover". This bout of comic insanity shows why the Waste continue to be originators, not imitators, and the rock-solid musical performance paints them as a true crossover band rather than merely revivalists. If you missed this set, you missed Day 2.

God Forbid [6.5/7]
They finally have a new goddamned record out, and for a shortish set, this was a hell of an intro to it. Dallas was out (probably for good and allegedly as a result of some epically failing internet drama), but ably subbed for by Kris from Darkest Hour, and the rest of the band continued at the expected high level of a solid performance of the first order. Yes, it probably wasn't abstractly better than some of the other hardcore/metalcore sets here, but I'm a fan, and beyond that, God Forbid has survived into the age of Suicide Silence and Job For A Cowboy for a reason. I like this band, but even at an intellectual distance, they did a hell of a set here that ought to go a significant way towards confirming their cred with other people.

Children of Bodom [6/7]
Again, too fucking short of a set, and there were some phasing problems between Alexi and Janne (likely, blame the PA again, as ever in this building), but at least they kept mostly good songs in. This needs some clarification -- mostly good songs from the perspective of someone who still likes the band, but somehow has continually avoided owning anything later than Hatebreeder. Metalfest strikes again -- more on-the-same-page-ness and another half hour of time would have been fucking balls.


At this point, it's reasonable to note that I bailed, each night, with two bands including the nominal headliner remaining, and have spent much of these last two posts bitching about short set times and the multiplicity of bands that suck; bearing these factors in mind, it's fair to ask why I still go to this fest, when MDF is only marginally more expensive and more requiring of time off from work. I have problems with this too, sometimes, but the final answer seems to be that I am a New England metalhead, and this is my festival too. Yes, NEDF is more 'ours', but that doesn't make this fest any less so. I wish that the bands were better, or that there were fewer of them (and better, obviously), that this was outdoors with a $30 camping fee instead of indoors with a godawful hotel bill, that the organizers would make an effort to keep the schedule on schedule, or to notify people when and how it gets fucked up, but when all is said and done, Scott et al do a decent enough job of bringing in bands from all over, and manage to make money off it in the bargain, which ensures that this fest, as with any fest, can continue.

This is not, as they hype themselves, the best metalfest in the world; it's not even the best of its type, as With Full Force is in every way a functioning superset of this festival, plus all of the enhancements wished for above, but it remains the best multi-spectrum metalfest in the US. Someday, MDF or maybe NEDF will move outside and displace it as the best unilaterally; Built To Last is already better among hardcore/punk fests indoors. Until then, though, NEMHF will remain in its place of preeminence, and I will probably keep going...and as befits people in my demographic, the old dudes in kuttes who automatically reject anything that doesn't sound like Kreator, probably keep grousing about it.


Status update, because I forgot to do it before:
Total points Friday: 74.5
Average Friday: 5.32
Total points Saturday: 68.5
Average Saturday: 5.27
Festival total average: 5.3

Again, if you skip the bands that you don't like and the ones you do don't get jobbed, this is actually a pretty decent festival...but now that MDF has announced that their mainstage is going to be outside, I'm bummed that I didn't give this a pass and go down for that one. Of course, I've got to move apartments this month and I think my buddy's getting married that weekend, so I wouldn't be able to go anyway, but still. The only caution is that once you go to one of these, you're going to turn into an insufferable git like me who has problems associating 'festival' with anything that isn't also 'open-air'.

NEMHF 2009 - day 1 [Worcester Palladium and Chasers, Worcester, 4/17/2009]

The wait of the better part of a month is over; below follows the first part of this year's NEMHF report. The second will follow when I finish transcribing it.



Good Bands Day

Friday at the NEMHF distinguished itself this year by packing in nearly every band playing the festival that I was interested in seeing. Yes, this meant that I effectively paid 34 bucks to see God Forbid, Municipal Waste, and Book of Black Earth on Sunday, but the organizers do a good job in salting good bands from both metal and, presumably, hardcore into both days so that people with wide interests have to bitch, bite the bullet, and see both days.

I went over shortly after doors opened, because I wanted to be sure that I caught Psycroptic; there was still a huge lineup going all the way down the block to Chasers (site of the third stage, new this year and a pretty good idea), but it was processed quickly, and in no time I was up past where Frank, Terrance, and Derek from Suffocation were standing around hanging out (you really forget how short most of these guys are, especially Frank and Terrance, when they're up on stage playing monstrous skull-destroying death metal), past the people passing out free Monster energy shots (no thanks, I can drink Jaeger and listen to Exodus), and through the rigamarole into the venue.

After a quick swing through the merch area, not buying anything yet, I went down front, onto the rail, and just in bloody time, because, as usual, the schedule had gotten fucked up and the first goddamned band on the schedule had missed their slot. Instead of low-expectationscore, I got....

Psycroptic [6/7]
This set was too short, and too early in the day. Nevertheless, the band crushed, and I got to see them from nearly contact range. They certainly didn't feel like it was barely past noon, and a fair amount of the energy from the stage made it out into the audience as well. The tour that they're currently on has them well-matched as support for Suffocation, with their marginally more technical and correspondingly less slammy take on brutal death, but the organizers did the band -- and New England death fans -- a disservice by putting them on so far in advance of their package's headliners. Everyone actually in the building dug the hell out of them, and the sound was good for them, unlike the last Aussie band to practically open the fest, but the floor wasn't full here, and they deserved better than that.

xThe Warx [4/7]
I did my serious merch run after this, and this band, a hardcore act from I think Jersey, were playing while I spent way too much money at the Deepsend and Oak Knoll tables and snubbed the major labels like some kvlter-than-thou twit in a ridiculous jacket covered in I-go-to-German-metal-fests-and-you-don't patches. OH WAIT.
The music was decent, pretty well-executed but not world-shaking, and even if I have a hard time sometimes understanding why people make this kind of brutal HC their primary listening interest, it wasn't actively bad.

After cairning the morning's CDs back at my hotel, I came back in time for...

Withered [6/7]
Though this set lacked the bizarre mystical overtones and undertones of the first time I saw them (downstairs in this building), it was probably the best set I've seen from them since. This was raw, kvlt, black-doom at about its best; the last record wasn't super inspiring, but maybe I've got to go back and take another run or so through it. Hella good, though one of the few spots of this kind of music at a metalfest that can really be 90% described as "Shadows Fall with some really big error bars". If you missed this, BoBE on Sunday, and Shroud of Bereavement, you saw pretty much zero of the fest's even peripherally doomish music.

I got interrupted during this band by a call from work that I only even caught by accident. People from my work occasionally bitch about getting called on vacation, but this is because they make themselves somewhat available; when I'm on vacation, I'm pretty much dead unreachable and in some cases may not be in a fit condition to give a coherent answer. This was lucky: I felt the phone ring, I could walk outside, and I wasn't drunk at the time. At Wacken or Party.San this summer, or if I'm in the middle of paddling across the Oresund, this may not be the case.

Burning Human [5/7]
This band provided some pretty good deathcore, all things considered, though I can't say that I was that pumped up about the singer's constant exhortations to "go make some enemies". That's like, the opposite of what pits are or should be about: the facility to absolutely burn out all your aggression in a context where that's accepted, so that if you punch your friend in the face, he'll still get the next round at the bar, or if you clip a total stranger, they won't follow you out to the parking lot and pull out a bicycle chain. Battle without casualties or consequences, as long as you're sozial about it.

Trap Them [6/7]
I'd been meaning to see this band for a while, and even in this experience, wedged way at the back, the payoff was worth the wait. Complete badass grind like a brick to the face, exactly the kind of music you want to see upstairs at this fest, but apparently the packed crowd wasn't being brutal enough, as the singer kept cussing the front out for not moving enough. Maybe it's just the audience; I'll stay on the lookout for these guys at the Midway or the Democracy Center....and be sure to pick up a second knee brace before going down.

Here I went downstairs to be sure to catch Toxic Holocaust, though I really shouldn't've, because in the process I ended up missing Decrepit Birth for After the Burial, which is the kind of thing you do if and only if your purpose in doing so is to be down front for the siqq mosh khed. Seriously, would it kill Scott to set up a whiteboard or two, or failing that, set up a Twitter feed to dump updates into? Either way, dudes would be better appraised of what's going on, and in the second case, we would also have a clear indicator of who needs to get punched in the face.

After The Burial [4/7]
Man, I thought the era of biting Swedecore was over. Apparently not, at least not at this festival. These guys had some nice execution, but pretty much zero originality. Moving a little closer, I was able to count pegs -- these guys were slinging 8-string guitars, but not really using them effectively. Maybe that's where the nu-metal impressions (viz Keith Bergman's "evil jump ropes") in my notes came in.

Toxic Holocaust [6/7]
This is NEMHF, so the organizers can't really bring in Sodom, Sarcofago, or Motorhead; hence these dudes. This was a pretty damn ripping set, likely better than the last time I saw them, despite being downstairs rather than up, and being criminally pinched for time. Fortunately, Toxic Holocaust is a D-thrash band, so when faced with short set times, they just play shit faster to fit songs in, and get debatably better results.

Later on at night, Joel grabbed me and gave props for my Wacken strips -- he's one of the few who has ever noticed them first, or that there's a serious stack going on there. I have no witnesses or recordings, though, so I'm not going to go on some kuttentraeger ego trip bragging about how the main dude of Toxic Holocaust thinks my jacket is awesome. OHWAIT.

Here, I switched buildings in order to catch Shroud of Bereavement over on the third stage, which was in a bar on the other side of the back parking lot. This was a good idea in theory, but the setup inside was kind of fucked. Fortunately, despite the weird staging and the radical differences between their sound and everything else booked into this stage, there were more people in the audience (lead by Juan Untombed/ex-Summoning Hate) than on stage by the time Shroud started.

Shroud of Bereavement [5/7]
There's really only so much that you can do with two songs in 20 minutes, which was going to be a pitfall for this band in this context in any case. The performance was decent, despite some spotty sound from the PA and the complexities of having like eight people, including several new members, on stage with monitors set up for basically a hardcore band; they should have gotten longer -- and will at the Metal Thursday three-year anniversary -- but did well with what they had despite the weird fit. They should have flyered this set during and/or after Withered; eh, c'est la vie.

After this, and of course giving the band appreesh because seriously, were the flatcaps going to cheer for a doom band?, I went back over to the main building and commenced waiting through bands I didn't like in order to see bands I did.

Whitechapel [4/7]
This band, like perhaps too many on this bill, was solid in their execution but actively tiresome to listen to. In the balance, this was pretty average deathcore, but not quite the Whitebeltchapel implications that get tossed around a little too easily.

The Haunted [6/7]
In a sense, they were just going through the motions, probably exacerbated by the restricted set time. This was probably the least good of the times that I've seen the band, but it was still, as evinced, a cool performance; the rest of the band may be in drill-for-half-an-hour-and-go-drink mode, but I'm not sure Peter Dolving even comes with this setting. He was on his game as usual, anti-rockstar rockstar in full cry, and also rolled out a couple bizarre anecdotes of what it's like to be in a band with fans, and how the fans really do keep the bands going. Maybe kinda had to be there.

Autumn Burns Red [4.5/7]
Well, I guess if you can't get In Flames or Killswitch, these guys are next on the central casting list, like how Dolph Lundgren picks up the roles that Arnold tosses back to his agent with only the ejaculation "Schrott!" Moderately formulaic metalcore with melodic leads; if this band did not exist, this festival would spontaneously generate them.

OK, that's not super fair. However, the preponderance of metalcore-nach-deathcore-nach-metalcore on this bill had me seriously questioning, at several points, why I keep coming. I don't mind, and often dig, the actual hardcore bands when they bother to book them, and as a metalhead would prefer a hella lot more real metal, but this puree of genres is something, at least for me, to endure rather than get up for.

The Acacia Strain [5/7]
Gloriously content-free as always, and though they seemed pinched for time, Vincent still got off a few good bon mots. There is nothing to this band but breakdowns, but even at that, they've got some damned good breakdowns.

Napalm Death [6.5/7]
There's an upside to short songs in a setting like this, obviously, as you can pack more of them into the requisite shitty setlength. The smashed though a strong set of both old and new material (not much from the experimental middle period before Nasum held their feet to the fire again), and "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" sounded just about the best I've heard it. Good all around.

Suffocation [6.5/7]
Despite the shorter time, this was a filled-out as well as balls-out set, which saw Frank in a seriously wacky mood ranting between songs, and a fair slice of new material. It sounded, surprise surprise, a lot like a lot of other Suffocation, but just as finished and crushing as the rest of the performance. The new record's not going to be some kind of breakout, but if you dig Suffocation or just love death metal, it'll definitely be worth a spin.

NEMHCF report - severely delayed

Being a brief overview, with a lot of side comments, from the 2008 edition of the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. This covers three days and more than 30 bands, so hang on for the ride. Nearly all the material in this is from notes taken at the time of the events, but there's a little that's woven in or touched up after the fact.


FRIDAY - GIGANTOUR

4:30 - lineup
I've been in lineups at the Palladium before, but this is fookin ridiculous; the front, two blocks down the side, and nearly another block around the corner, just wall-to-wall metalheads. Tonight sold out, and it really looks like every single goddamn head of the count is out on the tiles, as it were, right now. We had an enterprising guy take a case of Poland Spring down the line to his place -- at $2 a bottle, that's a nice profit on the relatively short walk to a long stand.
I may not see High on Fire due to this, but what the hell; at least it ain't raining.

5:15 - still in the lineup, but about a block from the door
Still in line -- it's like Itzehoe, but sober. And, fortunately, much, much shorter of a wait.
Noted by a bus: a red floormat placed by the door, that the band may not dash their foot upon a stone when alighting. Lol rockstars.

High on Fire [5/7]
I saw most of their set after all, despite the time spent at the merch and beer stands, and they were pretty decent, though nothing especially worldbreaking. A good and mostly true start to what'll hopefully be a good fest; "true" is probably a little much to ask at this point.

~~~
The security stole my fuckin' Kuli! Seriously, one of my Grade A pens got jacked on the way in, presumably as an anti-graffiti move. GARBAGE. So I went over to the ESP raffle table, pretended to fill out an entry, and stole one of theirs back, but it sucks; I've got to go procure another Grade A pen from somewhere to jam down my boot for the rest of the fest.

The heightened security was heightened just enough to be annoying; thanks to my Epic Leg Armor and the unwillingness of the security to check certain areas, I was able to bring in a pair of Powerbars for Saturday and both the stolen pen and my folding letter opener on both remaining days. I don't want to deal with metal-detector wands, but it'd be better to have a sane policy and more bathroom supervision than to make people stuff inocuous items down their grundle so that they won't get ripped off.
~~~

Job For A Cowboy [4/7]
Other people have been using "Job For A Girlboy" lately to get to a certain acronym that expresses their disapprobation for the band. In this case, though, "Job For A Goatwhore" would be more apt, and get to the acronym as a total side-effect; it should be damning enough of this band's lack of originality or interesting material that their set was such that a completely derivative band could have done what they were trying to do better, and in a more interesting fashion. It's pretty sad when you're derivative of derivative bands -- as well as Morbid Angel, into whom this band's teeth are still sunk -- but this started decent, then tailed off in an immediate and drastic fashion. After 3 or so songs, it got physically difficult to listen to, and this is coming from someone who actually likes Lugubrum, and can put up with J-pop in certain situations. No fucking idea why people like this band -- no, wait, that's right, a lot of people are fooking imbeciles.

~~~
looking at sampler CDs in the merch area:
What the hell is all this Kiuas on the Spinefarm sample CD? There's better bands on Spinefarm than fuckin' Kiuas, fer chrissake.
~~~

Children of Bodom [6/7]
Maybe a 5.5 (it wasn't, even when I opened that box with the Megadeth score), but I'm not doing split scores yet and would prefer not to. Alexi's solos were a little muted, but they were pretty cool despite the weight of new stuff in the set, and they closed with "Touch Like An Angel of Death" -- what the fuck more do you want? At least they realize that their old shit's where the power's at -- now why don't they try and evolve that instead of continually trying to be "In Flames with balls"? The world may never know.

In Flames [5/7]
There was once upon a time a little record called Colony. It marked an inflection point in In Flames' career, and proved that NWOSDM -- Edge of Sanity and Dissection made accessible, or a nice bowl of Dismember with some Iron Maiden drizzled on top -- would sell to a broad audience. In Flames did 12 songs tonight, including precisely one from this record or earlier (the namecheck on Jester Race). For this I blame not metalcore but the Euro festivals. In Flames has grown accustomed to playing at 2 in the morning, pumping tunes out over the exhausted, pitch-black infield at Wacken, at Reading, at Rock Am Ring and the like, and this was a 2AM set, a long pile of unflavored, all-things-by-implication-to-all-people radio metal with only the barest trappings of anything real, lazy metal for exhausted people...delivered south of 10PM in an indoor hall. Maybe Megadeth's audience is yawning past their bedtime, but most of us are awake, and not nearly as gassed as I normally am when one day's bleeding into another north of Hamburg, and the sky's so actively black as to block out lights. In Flames is a good band when you're in the tank and half dead on your feet from a day of better music; here, not so much.

Megadeth [6.5/7]
Though this would ahve to be really, really stretched to represent a peak Megadeth lineup. they put on a near-peak performance, with Dave his usual ripping self, James and Shawn solid on rhythm, and Chris Broderick impressive, but not surprising to anyone who was familiar with his talents from Jag Panzer and Nevermore. The set was balanced well between old and new material, down the whole gamut from "The Mechanix" to "Gears of War". We got a lot of hits and also a few deeper cuts; it's difficult to se how, now, in the age of Dave Mustaine and His Amazing Sidemen, you'd see a better Megadeth set. Maybe in a larger venue -- Gigantour was originally booked for Thursday at the hockey arena next door -- but this was a damn fine performance and anyone who's somehow disappointed is simply delusional.

--

SATURDAY - SAME AS IT EVER WAS DAY

Veil of Maya [4/7]
What a fuckin' disappointment. If you're going to name your band after a Cynic song, you ought to be at least a little original. Instead, fucking lameass metalcore. I didn't stick too long -- I had to get down front for Keep of Kalessin -- but from their first few cuts, things were not going to improve.

The End [6/7]
Fuckin' A -- now this is how new-school metal is supposed to be. They had a lot of the progression of a 3 or an Unexpect, but with a more solid thrash core, and the result is an overwhelmingly and unambiguously positive reaction from those assembled. If you slept in and missed this band, you lose.

Keep of Kalessin [6/7]
And the good shit continues; I was right up front as before, and what their solidly Norse-tradition black metal lacked in immediate originality was patched over amply by excellent execution -- and the fact that neither Emperor nor Immortal was on this fest. It's good to hear real, honest black metal at a festival like this -- even better to hear it done this well.

~~~
The perils of being up front with a notebook and an overbuilt jacket: I got mistaken for a member of Nightmare by the founders of a Myspace page for kuttes, and for an actual journalist (Metal George of The Accursed) by an established photographer (Frank White, if it matters). No portfolio, no credentials, no worries. ;)

On a related note, people who actually belong to said "heavy metal vest" community need to seriously re-evaluate why they are in metal and why they choose to build a kutte. If it's to fit in because Municipal Waste told you to sew patches on your vest, you need to burn your rig and jump off a bridge. Jacketcrafting is an ancient and noble artform practiced to announce your preferences in metal to all and sundry: you do it because you want to build a jacket, not because all your friends have one, and you build it to look violently different from anything else out there, not exactly like one you saw in some pictures from '86.
~~~

Monstrosity [7/7]
It was fucking criminal how these guys got cut off -- the drummer was rightfully ripshit, throwing pieces of the kit and backline around the stage -- especially since they were in the middle of an absolute gem of a set: tight, dialed in, and with the superb soundboard support that the Palladium only gives to death metal bands once in a blue moon. This was Florida's best, setting a high standard for Hate Eternal, and on any sane fest, they'd've had a lot more than 20 minutes, and hence, no cause for frustration and wreckage.

Skeleton Witch [6/7]
If they were other things before, this set at 20 minutes showed them stripped to the bare essence as a melodic thrash metal bad. A thoroughly good set, but as with the preceding band, cursed by inadequate time.

~~~
During this band, Aaron got back at me decisively for the "sleeping on the job" picture. What remains to be seen is if this picture will be published or privately held -- it's looking like the second for now, or if it's published, nobody cares to point out the silliness.

Since I continued to stand down the front through the last two bands as well, my jacket continued to draw interest. Well, overbuilt is overbuilt.
~~~

Through The Eyes Of The Dead [5.5/7]
Their output was better than most of the other modernistic death metal bands on this bill, but oddly, not markedly different. To a certain degree, I'm just the wrong audience, but there are other slammy and core-y bands out there that are better.

Animosity [5/7]
I've been pretty selective about what I see, but this was the first band that could even partway qualify as hardcore. I'm much more of a metal fan, but this is the NEMHCF, and the HXC portion of the bill shouldn't just get pushed into some closet upstairs. They had a few technical difficulties at the start, but presently hit their stride and gave a kickass performance. This probably wasn't an ideal venue to see them in, but I and my busted knee don't care, and the kids on the floor throwing down didn't look like they cared either.

~~~
At this point I gave Arsis -- and, as it turned out, Municipal Waste, though that's in another comment -- a pass in order to keep my seat. At intervals like this I took the brace off to keep the skin aerated and not rotting away, but every second of potential rest for the joint was precious.
~~~

Despised Icon [5/7]
Truth told, I did actually break out laughing in places. Not many, but in taking deathcore to its ne plus ultra, DI also drives up the elements of the style that are only silly: form-pattern breakdowns, vocals worthy of a trained hog, and faux-hip-hop posturing. Despite the lulzworthy parts, they still made some decent music, and if the singer hadn't killed the mood by mentioning the Bruins going down to the Habs, it might have graded out as yet better.

~~~
Scott was at stageside for these guys, in sharp visual contrast to the Scott Lee Clothing banners hanging up; it's a little early for central New England's foremost heavy-music-promotion impresario to branch out a la Russell Simmons, at least from my perch. Seriously, would you buy designer casual wear from this man? Enough people have issues buying the bills he puts together for these fests, let alone stuff with his name and face on it to stick next to their skin. The Myspace for it is pretty tongue-in-cheek, but people are apparently still buying it.
~~~

As Blood Runs Black [5/7]
I was tempted to dock them a point for turning "bring the fucking ruckus" into a chorus, but did not; when not being laughable in this regard, these Angelenos worked up a quality set of heavier metalcore that recalled old In Flames in its best places; as good as can reasonably be expected for a filler band playing before re-entry closes.

Heaven Shall Burn [6/7]
A hell of a US debut, but this fest always seems to get its share of good ones. Their Wacken set was better, but this perfect fusion of metal and hardcore will hopefully make believers out of the contingent here.
A real class touch was Marcus going along the barricade after the last song to slap hands with the faithful; it's a little thing, but such things go a long way in hardcore. Willkommen in da VSA, HSB!

~~~
Spotted in the pit: a big dude with the National Alliance logo on his shoulder, throwing down and singing along with the band. If he's still NS, I can't wait until he gets into their back catalog and the material about Primo Levi and Hans and Sophie Scholl -- to say nothing of that cover of "Destroy Fascism".
~~~

Vital Remains [5/7]
We're in Worcester, and Scott's bellowing from the stage while Crazy Dan is passing out mayhem to all and sundry below -- must be Zircon at Metal Thursday, right? Not this time, and despite the sound problems and the necessary dropoff in total execution due to Tony's change in sidemen (Scott debatably outperformed Glenn, but the other instrumentalists had some slop in the toes of the big shoes they were trying to fill), Vital still put up a thoroughly killer set. It wasn't a peak by any means, but still through-and-through quality death in the old style.

This entry was almost entitled "Vital Receipts", but while I trust Mark (Composted, TYAG) Richards to be generally accurate in his reporting of why his band gets de-listed from certain shows, I don't want to stir that pot until the local dudes who are actually in Vital have had the chance to comment on it, as it's quite possible it's an issue with the promoter rather than any of the bands involved.

~~~
This festival is missing a lot of things -- and outdoor venue, internal food vendors, and more, less vile toilet accomodations come to mind -- but the most striking is a SIMPLE FUCKING WHITEBOARD, which is easily provided so that attendees can be kept apprised of schedule changes. I missed Municipal Waste due to the second stage, as usual, getting fucked up, and didn't learn about it until I happened to run into Matt (MPD) Kenney while in line for the head. WHAT THE FUCK.

Also, re-entry closed early, so instead of going back to the hotel to drop my merch, I got stuck at the venue listening to nu-Kataklysm. Again, what the fuck.
~~~

Kataklysm [4/7]
These guys must be thanking their lucky stars that Cryptopsy have suddenly decided to become terrible, so that their own decline into mediocrity goes unnoticed. This was as boring and staid a set of mid-paced death metal as you'd like to see, and having it sold as "hyperblast" in any regard should be getting more people madder about being ripped off. Sure, Hypocrisy wasn't playing this festival, but the day that modern Kataklysm is remotely as interesting or as original as Hypocrisy is the day I stop ranting about them like this.

~~~
I've seen now 3 different people in 3 different Wacken shirts here. The word is spreading -- maybe I'll have to do a roll call come July or so and see if anyone among the RttP hordes is also going to be in attendance this time out.
~~~

Hate Eternal [5.5/7]
This band is seriously cursed or something -- 3 times I see them in this building, 3 times they get a seriously raw deal from the soundboard. As before, Erik & co. fought back through it, but it remained thin and low, a serious disservice to the band, and to those in the audience counting them as the last decent band of the day. I'm still looking forward to Shadows Fall, and to a lesser degree Dimmu and -- heresy, heresy! -- The Acacia Strain, but those whose tastes are less catholic than mine may well be heading for the doors to catch Toxic Holocaust's in-town basement gig, and this wasn't as good a valediction for them as it could have been if the tech side had their goddamn oars all in.

~~~
I don't know where exactly the "line" for Kommerz is that bands best dare not cross, but Iron Maiden Chuck Taylors are definitely across it. It is only small consolation to know that not only do Bruce, Steve, and the rest have this kid's money now, they are probably laughing at him as well.
~~~

The Acacia Strain [5/7]
Vincent's gotten fat with success -- or maybe he's just got a bad case of "studio ass", as they're in recording right now. In any case, the band has similarly become "more so"; content-free mosh-spree breakdowns-by-the-numbers that only gets interesting when the singer's talking off the cuff to fill time. This time, he ripped on trends and image...but if he looks up his band's '06 set here on RttP, he'll see his Myspace haircut and tight jeans on the eve of their debut. OH SNAP LOLZ.

~~~
Thanks to Behemoth, we now have children in clumsy corpsepaint waiting for metalcore bands to finish so that their Satanic idols can go on. Somehow, I get the feeling that this isn't what Dead cut himself up on stage for, or why Samoth and others did their two years in stir for arson. Dimmu has 8x10 rockstar glossies out now courtesy of ESP -- this from a scene where bands use warnames to defer credit and for a while didn't even put their own pics in the liner notes of their records. FUCK TRENDS -- BLACK METAL ISOLATION!!

On music and wrestling:
- Skinless issuing their demo compilation on a label that is also an indie wrestling promotion: very metal.
- Victory Records cross-promoting with Wrestlemania, as on shopping bags here: not punk rock at all.
It's not the "wrestling" per se -- sriously, put ropes around a mosh pit and you've got a bout, one bunch of dudes pretending to fight each other is much the same as the next -- or the fakery (it's all just entertainment); it's the fucking Kommerz that sticks in my craw. True, there's no money in metal, so every dollar helps, but it's a lot less lame when it coems from somewhere with some fookin integrity.
~~~

Behemoth [6/7]
Despite my skepticism going in, this was actually a really good set -- sticking to their hits and pretty deathy as well as black metal -- not perfect, but a fun time, and that, like the last band, is sufficient excuse for them to have fans. It aint enough to put me in that total, but it's enough to make the time spent bearable.

~~~
Overkill cancelled, so bands lately have been playing a little longer, which is good all around -- bands don't get shafted into an opener-length set as a headliner, and I don't have to sit through Overkill. Maybe I just got a bad set from them at Wacken in '05, but it was good on the few good songs that they did there -- which is a bad indicator that they may actually be that overrated after all.



SUNDAY - PAGANS AND PONGIDAE DAY


Blame dysentery -- the gut condition, not the band -- for me missing the last two bands Saturday. Jaeger and street food do bad things to your stomach in combination, but don't expect me to stop doing either at this fest.

Waking The Cadaver [4/7]
As silly as might have been expected, but their BREE BREE BREE SLAM BREE BREE was a decent enough backdrop to my final merch spree (modulo an Ensiferum shirt later at night).

After The Burial [4/7]
An entirely competent metalcore band, but I was really expecting to see Unexpect here. I'd've been pissed if I ended up missing them, but fortunately the schedule dislocation on Sunday was fairly straightforward.

Unexpect [7/7]
Fucking wow. You won't, I expect, see a better 20-minute set than the one this bunch put up, and even better, those people who were there seemed to realize this as well. Good stuff; hopefully their spastic evolved black metal will continue to attract people with an appreciation for it.

Emmure [4/7]
Bree bree bree snore snore snore. I came back in time to make doors and be sure to be in position for Paganfest; seeing the tail end to this block of same-ish 'core that I mostly sat out on is merely a side effect.

A Life Once Lost [4/7]
I think I saw this band here once before, and they didn't make an impression on me that time either. I thought metalcore was dying out, and the coming thing was WTC and other bands ripping off the first wave of slam-death, but I guess not.

~~~
Three bands worth the candle of being up front for, then I can go sit down in back. There isn't seatage for love or money in here, and my back is getting friggin telescoped.
~~~

Eluveitie [7/7]
Neither quite In Extremo or quite Finntroll, this Swiss combo nonetheless put up quite the dominant performance, packing in the crowd into what was originally a half-empty front, then bloody well destroying the place with a frenetic and more folkic version of the black-fusion that drives the Paganfest package. If this is the standard, the two other support acts are on notice; Ensiferum at least can kick it out at this level easily.

Tyr [6/7]
If you're following a crazy-party band and want to sell the crowd on your doomy, progressive, vikingarock, it may not be the brightest idea to open with an extended a capella section sung entirely in Danish. The true viking fans in the crowd dug it, as this was a very well-turned-out set on all counts, but I'm not sure how many converts they made. Maybe victims of the bill, but they gave a damn good effort and hopefully managed to draw on this away leg -- they'll win at home when folks download or buy their CDs.

~~~
Since there's been approximately zero immigration to the Faeroes in the last 800 years, it's easy even for people who didn't know that Tyr is a 3-piece on record to see that the guitarist of Eluveitie is giving them a hand on this tour, rather than vice versa. It's the world's easiest game of spot-the-not-a-viking.
~~~

Turisas [6/7]
In principal, we've heard this before -- at least some of us -- as Otyg with a little extra Ensiferum over the top. However, it was well-delivered, and the crowd was fucking psyched -- if they had more material on the level of "Rasputin", they'd have a strong case for headlining this roving melee. Even as is, though, a hell of a fun time.

You've got to wonder about the history of Turisas' accordionist; the band is about my age and a little younger, so there she was, growing up in Finland on the turn of the Cold War, going to accordion lessons, likely playing "Lady of Spain" over and over until she wanted to throw the damned thing down the stairs, and the teacher after it, never dreaming that she would one day be a professional in a rock band, the world's coolest live keyboard replacement, and get to stand on stage on multiple continents wearing furs and lederhosen, face painted like an Apache, as the crowd roared and screamed for more. If it doesn't make any sense on paper, imagine what it's like to live it. And you thought your life was odd....

Ensiferum [7/7]
Score does not include adjustments for injury; unlike last time, I came out of an Ensiferum pit-wall with all my joints intact. It would probably still be on this level even if I'd brewed something up; like all the Paganfest crew, the set was too goddamned short, but every last second was quality. The whole floor went into pit mode, German-style, a couple times, and dudes were getting crowdchucked like Bury Your Dead was laying it down. An ace performance, and full worth being the last band I was down front for.

~~~
If you can see this tour when they aren't on a festival bill, definitely do it. Four great bands is too much to be done service by barely 2 1/2 hours, including stage changes.

So Mike Hsiu of 'AAF got a lifetime achievement award from Full Blown Chaos (and maybe the organizers, who knows), and Divine Heresy cancelled (due to a ridiculous incident in Poughkepsie that many of the attendees here would have given given an arm and a leg to see and laugh at live)....can't say I'm sorry about the second....
~~~

Meshuggah [7/7]
I think I remember their '03 set here as being a little longer, but if this time was shorter and less well-produced -- the bass up too high for a couple songs -- the musical performance was nonetheless stellar. The hall started to empty out after they took their leave, and while the early birds'll miss Ministry, they got a pretty fuckin' cool headlining set out of Meshuggah.

Seriously, it's not even 11 and the crowd is in full flight. WTF? I know people have to work in the morning, but they stay to the end of normal shows at this place when the next day's a workday.

~~~
The sole disappointment of the day is that I end it broke, down to my last ten-spot. If I had another C-note coming in, as planned, I'd have an Eluveitie shirt on my belt, and CDs from them and Turisas in my jacket pouches. Such is life, though; never money nor time enough for everything we desire.
~~~

Ministry [6/7]
I didn't end up sticking for the whole set, but what I saw was choice. Ministry is a band that appropriates both metal and industrial on their own terms rather than the genre's, and a standing that comes not only from close on 30 years of service, but also from the top-class music that's allowed them to be a working band for longer than many members of this audience have been alive. While this wasn't a peak set, and the experience was near equal parts visual and music -- and in that caption, less of their older stuff -- it was still a good time, and I'm glad to have seen them live before Al folds the tents for good.


Final returns:
Friday - 5 bands
26.5 points
average 5.3
Saturday - 15 bands
81 points
average 5.4
Sunday - 11 bands
62 points
average 5.64

It's amazing how high average scores can get at this fest when you skip nearly all the bands that you don't like, and the soundboard doesn't fuck over the bands you do.

Metalfest (NEMHF) Report

New England Metal (Blade) and "Hardcore" Festival 2007
Worcester Palladium, 4/27/2007 and 4/28/2007
--

This is the rundown of this year's Metalfest; the snideness in the title is the result of the writer's inherently sarcastic nature rather than any real displeasure with the fest. This was a decent year, not as good as last, but not as bad as it could have been. There are probably two reasons for this.

First, last year was not merely great, but historically great in terms of lineup depth, drawing across all styles, running 3 full days, and gathering in a large number of bands from overseas. It was an expensive ticket, but worth it when it was considered that we got a lineup worthy of, say, Summer Breeze or With Full Force to do an indoor fest in North America that ran in the low four figures attendance-wise. This year was a step down, but still good, and very importantly a lot less expensive to put up. If Jabba the Scott (no disrespect intended, especially since he got Revocation on this year) took a hiding last year, it makes sense that he'd tighten his belt a little this year and do something like handing the second day (of only 2) over to Metal Blade. This is the second reason; while they do still have a bunch of good bands, I'm not entirely satisfied with the current direction of Metal Blade as a label. I recognize that it's difficult to survive as a record label in the present day, and if Job For A Cowboy's record sales help underwrite 3's recording and tour support, that's cool; the real issue is that if marketed properly, 3 could sell a ton of records on their own hook, and I still believe that labels have a responsibility to promote good music over crap that sells easily.

Of course, this is my definition of "good music" in play, and at this kind of festival I'm slipping out of the general population and into that upper tier of "cranky old men in kuttes who think everything (new) sucks". This is not precisely the case -- yet; give me another five years and I'm sure that I'll be insufferable if the band onstage isn't either Kreator or obviously ripping them off.


FRIDAY
or, God Damn It, Scott, Buy A God Damn Whiteboard

The weather for this weekend was wet, meaning that it was actually a good thing that I had a normal jacket on, not my kutte, while I was standing in line waiting for initial entry, which was forced by the fact that my hotel wasn't opening for check-in for another couple hours and I was squatting a space in a mini-mart parking lot. The line was a little shorter than last year, which mean that I actually got inside fairly close to the start of The Funeral Pyre's set.

The Funeral Pyre [5/7]
I was pleasantly surprised by the raw quality of this band's mix of black and death metal, especially going on so early on the second stage with a name that evokes the hordes of xYouthxCrewxRevivalx clones that are expected to pad the front of the bill at NEMHF. It just goes to show that you can't tell a book by its cover -- though in this case the band's Enslaved shirts did indicate that they were actually influenced by Enslaved. I didn't get to pick up their CD as a result of various antics trying to get my car off the street, but I will have to pick it up in the future.

Colin of Arabia [4/7]
Since I don't have a dominant interest in hardcore and didn't seek out the hardcore or alleged HC performances on the bill, I can't really comment on what proportion of the real hardcore at this festival this band represented. They were decent for their style, but while I often find hardcore intellectually interesting, I can't really bring myself to actually listen to it being played for any non-trivial amount of time. Those who are into this style or who were on the floor for it rather than up in the (sparsely populated) dealers' area buying the first installment of too many CDs from Oak Knoll would probably have enjoyed this set rather than simply appreciating it.

xDeathstarx [3.5/7]
The people who see commonalities between the rise in the early '80s of rap and thrash metal as racially divided responses to the same situation -- "urban blight music", in Peter Steele's words -- might want to take a look at the current generations of gangsta rap and toughguy hardcore: coming from someplace authentic, but often taking everything so far over the top as to make the result impossible to take seriously. This band fits the description, executing an average set of menacing but completely generic material while spreading the vocal load across three singers with approximately zero variance in style or range, and concluding their performance with an altar call. We've had Christian bands at Metalfest before, and while they weren't shy about declaring their beliefs, they kept it much more on the lines of "Jesus is there" rather than "come to Jesus". This is the first time I've actually seen a band laughed at at a gig; a significant portion of the second-stage crowd just cracked the hell up at the God promo. Musically, they were basically the same as any other random toughguy act, nothing special either way, but the instantiation of their Jesus-message was just laughable. (And yes, Nergal's rantings about how Behemoth hates Christians soooo much later at night were just as lame, so this isn't a religious discrimination issue.) God is Lulz.

Palehorse [4.5/7]
The main comment on this band in my notes is "When does it end?" which is not really fair; Palehorse is a toughguy hardcore band like many, many other toughguy hardcore bands on this bill, so while they were decent, they did kind of get caught in the undertow. My tolerance for extended exposure to this kind of music is kind of low, so if they'd been on a shorter local hardcore/thrash bill, I'd probably have liked this fairly decent set better.

Bloodlined Calligraphy [4/7]
Despite (or perhaps because of) their female singer, this band came off as yet another fairly generic hardcore band, with precious little particularly memorable about their set. Neither particularly good nor particularly bad, they didn't leave much of a strong impression, but they might have on someone who was either into this style or paying attention instead of wondering when the hell Revocation was going to go on, damnit.

At this point, those who have seen the schedule are going "Revo-who?", because Boston's best tech-thrash band is nowhere to be found on the programs. Well, welcome to the First Day of Metalfest Circus, in which the second-stage schedule gets it in the head with a shotgun and the organizers play Humpty Dumpty with it while not telling people who they're getting in to fill holes. What has been posted so far looks like the online schedule, but doesn't resemble at all what was posted on a single sheet of office paper next to the doors, let alone what was in the program. It surely would not kill the budget to get a whiteboard and write on it in magic marker who was playing when, then put it behind the second-stage bar where everyone could see it, and most people couldn't erase bits or draw penises on it. Revocation were a late add, and Scott could have hardly found better.

Revocation [6.5/7]
This wasn't their absolute best outing, but for a twenty-minute set from a complex and challenging band, it's difficult to ask for more. They pretty much played Summon The Spawn straight down, then closed with a sharp and cutting cover of "Symbolic" to complete the devastation. I hadn't heard this from them before, but it's Revocation covering Death, of course it's going to be good. They hopefully made a bunch of new fans as well as a good impression, but the confusion and anxiety they induced in the streams of kids leaving at the start may be more immediately satifying. Better that they'd stayed to experience the awesomeness, but it meant that I got up towards the front, and it's not as if everyone got Atheist on the first pass either. The hope is that, like 3 who was musically challenging and completely awesome early on the second stage last year, Revocation will get a decent slot on the main stage in the succeeding year as a followup.

Having seen Revocation, I could stop camping the second stage, go check in at my hotel, get some food and non-overpriced beer in, then come back in time to catch much of the metal portion of the main stage.

Still Remains [NR]
I got back in just at the end of their set, which they didn't announce as such, but which everyone was able to easily recognize because they were playing "The Worst Is Yet To Come". LOLZ WRIET ANOTEHR SONG BAND. I like this song, but I also have heard enough Still Remains to know that it's not sufficient to judge the band -- or any random performance of theirs -- by.

Despised Icon [5/7]
What do you call six Canucks -- sorry, five Canucks and a Masshole -- who can't decide whether they want to be Morbid Angel or Hatebreed? Replace the simple "?" with a ", Alex?", and you have a correct Jeopardy answer-question pair. Silliness aside, this was about the best performance that I've heard from Despised Icon, the most together and with the best sound, but while they've gotten their feet under them as a band, they now need to go out and do something with that foundation. Deathcore fans may be willing to take them as they are, and this set was pretty solid, but they showed enough talent here to demonstrate that they can do more than this -- as soon as they decide which direction they're going to move in, whether more death, more core, or forward to create something more distinctly their own.

Skinless [6/7]
I almost went up to Mark's to see Skinless on the Sunday following Metalfest, but didn't due to being sick and also because the last place you want to see Skinless is at a no-mosh venue. The snide thing to say is that they spend the time that they save by writing fairly simple death metal on thinking of new things for the audience to do, but this ignores the fact that Skinless is fun, if not very challenging, to listen to, and it's always a trip to see what they'll think of next. This time they had three "prepared" "mosh events"; first a normal but epically-sized circle pit that actually stayed going in a circle for a while rather than immediately breaking down into kung fu, then a few songs later their patented Tsunami of Death, and finally, at the end, the "zombie mosh", a full-floor Wall of Death done at a snail's pace against slow, brutal, riffage, which was one of the few times that the whole floor was actually moving. I wasn't down in among them, but watching the action and hearing the music was still plently cool.

Nachtmystium [6/7]
Black, thrashy, and grooving, this performance may or may not have been better than when I saw them at Mark's with 1349, but I definitely got more out of it due to being somewhere that I could actually hear them. Good stuff, and I'm going to have to get some of their records sooner rather than later.

Kataklysm [5/7]
This set focused on new music -- kind of hard not to, when you only get 20 minutes -- and as a result everyone was hugely into them...except one cranky old man in a kutte, who was standing on the first row above the floor grumbling to himself about how this was bullshit easy-listening-Kataklysm, and that they had no business hanging up their old logo and then not doing anything that could reasonably be described as hyperblast. Abstractly, Kataklysm did a solid and well-received set of mosh-friendly brutal death metal. Subjectively, this was easy-listening sellout bullshit that stomped all over the legacy of their old material with football boots, but this is hardly anything new. I feel bad for anyone into only their new material who bought Sorcery, like I did, from the CM table, but without knowing what's on it and then either crying as they get their ears spiked or becoming immensely disappointed with the band's current direction.

3 Inches of Blood [5/7]
The jury is still out on whether this band is a gag or not, or if they ever were, but regardless, they're a fun time, and they put together a solid set here. If hardcore was a template that you could add to various kinds of music rather than a genre of its own, this would be what you'd get on applying hardcore to power metal. As yet, there's no genre for this, but all that means is that 3 Inches of Blood don't have any competition (yet...still waiting for Volatile to record something), and fortunately this hasn't really induced them to slack off.

Walls of Jericho [4.5/7]
Before getting into this review, note that I went into this band's set with an open mind and did not have any existing prejudice against them for being from Ypsi. If I hadn't gotten a cheap apartment within walking distance of the Engineering campus while I was at Michigan, I'd have lived in Ypsilanti too.
That being said, if this band had a dude singer rather than a chick, nobody would care about them. Actually, they might still be a big deal, but this doesn't mean that they should be; there's just no accounting for taste when it comes to absolutely, totally generic metalcore. Most of the set was well-delivered enough, but the wheels came off over the last few songs to a certain degree; they need to get it together as well as come up with something to hang their hat on as a band other than their vocalist's gender, because otherwise they're going to be rapidly lapped and forgotten by the next wave of generic hardcore/metalcore bands with chick singers.

Devildriver [5/7]
Other people have been convinced somehow that Dez has seen the light and turned away from the darkness, but on the basis of this set, what he's done is salvage the rolling chassis of nu-metal and rebuild it into something worthwhile rather than doing something new from the ground up. This set was definitely more metal than nu, but in a wide sense could still be described as nu-metal and a little more narrowly as kinda boring. Respect is due, though, for coming out strongly against the pit ninjas, telling them to go back to the karate dojo if they want to kung fu fight, and just let people in the pit mosh. Maybe it's that we're both old farts at this point, but definitely, respect as well as lulz.

Bury Your Dead [5/7]
Though I hadn't seen this band before, they basically fulfilled expectations: strong and competently delivered brutal hardcore, but also fairly one-dimensional. There's only so far that passion and dedication will carry you, and this distance is right up to the point where people realize how silly it is that your biggest hit involves screaming your band's name over and over while the audience throws themselves into a pigpile in front of the stage. There's a fine line between clever and stupid, and we all think we're on the 'clever' side while other people are laughing up their sleeves and placing us in the second caption. BYD was entertaining, but unfortunately tough to take seriously without a large grain of salt.

Behemoth [5/7]
This was a nice set, and at least more visually black metal than the last time that they were around -- I can't recall whether they were corpsepainted when they came around with Morbid Angel, but they were this time -- but this is still, at least from my lookout, a fairly mediocre band; just good enough that some people wanted an encore, but not good enough that many people were disappointed when they didn't do one. I was glad for my part; I had heard quite enough Behemoth for one night and had a riddle to crack.

There is a riff in "Conquer All" taken directly from one of the few good or memorable songs that Morgana Lefay ever wrote; the riddle was in figuring out that it was from Lefay that I'd first heard this riff. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the stomach to listen through Maleficarum again to figure out which song in particular it was. (A quick look at metal-archives found that the lyrics matched the title track, one of the few good ones, again.) Weird as all hell, and I have no idea how Nergal found it given his supposed tastes (though there weren't many in the Polish underground in the late '90s who had a lot of respect for him); probably a re-invention at this point.

Dimmu Borgir [6.5/7]
This was a really well-staged and well-executed performance, but Dimmu's material isn't, overall, good enough to merit a top score. Regardless, it was a hell of an entertaining set, and at least Shagrath has finally ditched that ratty bathrobe that he used to wear all the time. At times, the visual aspect seemed creepily like Judas Priest, which may not be a bad thing; Dimmu Borgir has long since lost all credence and standing with the true kvlts, so they might as well bring their symphonic black metal attack to the largest possible audience by taking on a more universally-appealing and nostalgically-resonating image. It's still good music, just not especially true any more...if it ever was.


SATURDAY
or, No, We Are Not Just A Metalcore Label, Look At These Good Bands We Still Have

So after getting a good dose of schadenfreude watching the emo QB from Notre Dame squirm on the verge of tears because nobody'd drafted him yet, I headed over for Metal Blade day, with anticipation (3 and Cannibal Corpse) as well as trepidation (many other bands), because Metal Blade quite obviously isn't exactly what it once was.

The Destro [4/7]
This bunch was from Dallas, but it's really difficult to tell how you'd know that without being told; their sound is basically the same kind of brutal hardcore/metalcore that we see all the time locally in New England. It had its good points, and admittedly I was on my final scalping of the dealers' tables at the time, but overall it did come off as somewhat generic.

Jacket now thoroughly packed with CDs, I headed downstairs to see what Metal Blade had set up as headliners.

Shai Hulud [5/7]
The performance was pretty good (even though this band's material has been described in the past as "everything about '90s hardcore that needed a bullet in the head and a shallow grave"), and the oddly-somewhat-sparse crowd dug them, but it's not as though we haven't all heard this kind of material before. I missed Beyond The Embrace and Hallows Eve, but this was a decent enough start to the main stage for me.

3 [7/7]
As last year, this was simply a superb performance, though with a little more guitar firepower (both flamenco and conventional metal styles) and a few minor difficulties with the drum/percussion solo than the last time I saw them. The overall effect was still as stellar, with the only difference being that there were a hell of a lot more people standing around being impressed this time. There are not nearly enough bands like this, in metal or out, and if you like great music, they, like Pelican, should definitely be on your short list to check out.

Goatwhore [6/7]
Oh, Goatwhore. It just wouldn't be a metal show without them, and I'm surprised that they didn't find some way to get onto the first day as well. This was one of the better sets I've seen from them, and they definitely seemed a little better adjusted to this stage than the last time I saw them here, with Celtic Frost back in November. Five-plus months of constant touring will all kinds of bands over all kinds of venues will do that for you. A nice set, but you're likely to see a similar or better one from them within three weeks...no matter where you are...and then another one three weeks after that...

Impious [6/7]
I hadn't heard or really heard of this band prior to seeing them, and now I'm mad at myself for this fact. No pretensions, just a damn, damn good set of solid NWOSDM-driven thrash fuckin' metal. Kickass; just hope that they come around soon with a tour where they'll get more than 20 minutes to show off.

God Dethroned [5/7]
People besides me were calling out for their older material, but they focused principally on the new stuff; while kind of a bummer, this is unsurprising, as playing, say, "Soulcapture 1562", would leave approximately no room for anything else in a 20-minute set (sure 11 minutes, but when 20's all you get, every minute counts), and the new stuff is solid as well. It was at this point that I started to feel the effects of whatever virus I picked up while my system was surpressed from jetlag, exhaustion, and mild food poisoning, and at several points I literally was falling asleep on my feet -- while listening to live black/death blasting, natch.

Lizzy Borden [5/7]
I had not seen this band live before, but I'd heard enough of their material to wonder why in the hell Lizzy thought it was still worth trying to have a career. The answer is that the stage antics around the music are at least somewhat entertaining: the short definition of this band's style is "prop comedy of NWOBHM", and if that doesn't suggest "entertaining but played out", nothing will. The music was decent most of the time, but the gimmicks were often pretty much half-assed, like King Diamond without a budget for blood capsules. They didn't seem to be too happy with the crowd's less-than-exuberant reaction, but still hammed it up at the end like they'd just blown them out of their seats with a triple-encore at Madison Square Garden or Hammersmith. Metal Blade was filming this for a DVD, so my guess is that they were hoping the crowd would be brought up in post. For the historical record, NEMHF cheered these guys in accord with the quality of their performance, but any kind of "going wild" is false representation.

Job For A Cowboy [4/7]
This band more than any other illustrates the divide between the old and the new internet, because since Trey Azagthoth was too busy doing Sailor Moon RPG chats with his Quake-clan buddies over IRC, JFAC was able to eat his lunch by whoring themselves on Myspace. Generic in concept and execution, they would probably still have put me to sleep even if I hadn't been sick at the time, and everything they do that's actually good is done much better by other bands. In the last analysis, JFAC is a much less-inspired, less-interesting clone of Morbid Angel that unexplainably a bunch of 12-year-olds are into. This may not be the popular opinion, but it does happen to be TRUE. :P

The Red Chord [7/7]
This is the first proper set I've seen from this band (they did a three-song fix-the-schedule fill-in at last year's fest), and damn if they weren't absolutely impressive. They brought a tremendous amount of thrash sophistication and complexity without losing the power and directness of their hardcore roots, creating probably the optimium single set for this festival, reminding people that the idea of 'metalcore' need not be solely the wasteland that it's become since becoming popular. Great stuff, and maybe now I can finally persuade myself to buy some of their records -- I should have listened to Kreider and gotten into them back in '01 and '02.

The Black Dahlia Murder [6/7]
I have absolutely no idea how this band continues to do such killer live sets yet suck so relentlessly hard on record. The total effect of their performance was pretty much the same as the other two times I've seen them, both in this hall; we'll see how well they adapt to the Party Stage this summer as far as variance goes. Somehow, the power of their delivery pushes the material that comes off as so pedestrian on CD, and so it's hard to think of someone who'd really react negatively to this set.

Unfortunately, I was in no condition to continue on for the last three acts of the night. I wanted strongly to see Cannibal Corpse, but I'm seeing them at Wacken this summer, so it wasn't worth turning myself into one of their album covers to stick around for their set. And then, of course, there was no motivation to survive Unearth and make it to the "special guest jam"; people had been rumoring about Sacred Reich and Slayer, but Slayer is an active band, so you can see them sometime else, and Sacred Reich is also on the Wacken bill, so even if this had been how it went, I wouldn't have felt bad missing it. CC with Barnes? Also not interesting, and it also didn't happen; the only way I would have legitimately felt bad about not staying for this alleged once-in-a-lifetime event is if they somehow got Cirith Ungol back together to play down Frost & Fire. Metal Blade being what it is now, I was pretty confident that this wasn't going to happen -- and it didn't, though maybe sometime in the future NEMHF will be big enough to do the "cash offer you can't refuse" to get bands back together like Wacken and other top Euro fests regularly put up (the famous rumors of a million-euro guarantee for a Carcass reunion are probably fiction, but probably not far off the mark).


All in all, this was a good festival, though not great, but if all festivals were great, the standard would just be raised. This year was hurt greatly by several bands cancelling late; Cellador scratched due to illness, I Killed The Prom Queen and Abigail Williams broke up, and Satyricon couldn't get visas due to past criminal behavior. While I don't much miss many of the above (only Satyricon, and better to try and see them somewhere where Fenriz and Nocturno Culto may come out to play a few "covers"), the cancellations played hell with the schedule and enhanced the atmosphere of pure chaos that often seems to surround the fest. After the super-A-list lineup of last year, this two-day version has to feel like a letdown, but it's really just coming back to earth; as always, there's the hope that next year the scheduling will be tighter, the overall lineup quality a little better, and a little more real metal and real hardcore instead of just all metalcore, all the time, and it's realistic to believe that this step can be made from this year, while last year's was really too good to be sustained. Contrary to what might be implied from a lot of the commentary on the Saturday headliners, I did have a good time at this fest, met a bunch of cool people, and stuffed my ears and jacket with a bunch of good music. NEMHF is at least on the short list of the best festivals in North America, and we in New England are fortunate that it's right where we live.